Dear Kayhan Delibas, dear list-members,
I basically agree with Kayhan Delibas in all the details, but I also
believe, that his critique misses the point. Yes, it will be very
difficult to include the aforementioned countries in the
EU-programmes and yes, it will take a lot of time and cost probably
more money than they can afford.
But i didn't make this proposal because I thought it would be easy to
put it in practice (especially not because I myself do not know too
much about the workings of EU-science policy) but because I believe
that it would be at least an attempt to change the structure of
science-policy that would be visible to all of those countries and
that the proposal works on a more complex basis than just blaming
Israel for all the mess and punishing its scientists.
Instead it introduces a complex argument that works on all of these
sides, by showing that the EU science policy itself is part of the
mess in the near east by including some countries in its programs and
exluding others. At least symbolically this would be a much more
effective sign than a boycott, even if it would never be put into
practice. Furthermore my idea was primarily an attempt to show that
there might be more effective and better targeted actions than just a
boycott (and I do not believe that my proposal is the best of these
other ideas).
Michael Guggenheim
>Dear all,
>
>I would like to comment on Michael Guggenheim’s proposal that is as he put:
>
> “Since Israel is considered to belong to "europe" and is allowed to
>participate in EU-funded programs, why not instead of boycotting
>Israel stop "boycotting" Israels neighbours? The idea would be to ask
>for participation of palestinian, egyptian, lebanese or turkish
>participation in these programs.” Sun, 26 Oct 2003
>
>It seems some of the members of this list like JP ROOS found it as a good,
>reasonable and fairer solution. But I have some doubts about the workability
>of this proposal.
>
>The first point is that Turkey as a candidate country for the full EU
>membership has been already taking part in the EU- funded programs from the
>January 2003 and will became a full participant from the beginning of 2004.
>
>Second point I would like to make is, as a Turkish academic who has also been
>following this process, I found the process of Turkish participation
>extremely slow. Turkey first signed the EEC-Turkish association agreement
>forty years ago in 1963, this agreement ratified Ankara Agreement in 1980.
>Then Turkish participation in the EU-funded programs allowed 23 years later,
>in 2003. The slowness of this process is rather discouraging.
>
>The third point is that, this kind of programs require years of preparations,
>organisation and negotiations. It means even the Israel’s Arab neighbours
>accepted to take part it will take years to come. Also every participant
>country has to contribute huge sums of money. I doubt any of these countries
>like Palestine can afford this financial burden. In other words the financial
>side is costly. As far as I remember Israel first joined EU-programs during
>the 4th Frame Program (FP4) but later had to withdrew because they were not
>ready organisationally and otherwise to full participate.
>
>Finally, if Guggenheim’s proposal works it would be a reasonable and fairer
>way forward: it wont punish Israeli colugos as well as will provide
>Palestinian, Egyptian or Lebanese academics greater opportunity to take part
>in EU-funden programs, however it seems to me this proposal wont be working
>for the reasons I expressed above. So we might need to consider some other
>alternatives.
>
>Best Regards
>
>Kayhan Delibas
>
>
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